


What Is Love (Baby Don't Hurt Me)

by orphan_account



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Ambiguous Slash, Angst, Free to a good home, Incomplete, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-22
Updated: 2014-10-22
Packaged: 2018-02-22 03:44:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2493197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What no one truly realizes is this: that no living creature on the face of this Earth would want Charles Xavier to have anything but the highest of moral codes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Is Love (Baby Don't Hurt Me)

What no one truly realizes is this: that no living creature on the face of this Earth would want Charles Xavier to have anything but the highest of moral codes.

* * *

 Telepathy is . . . complicated. (Three billion radio stations all playing the same few songs, over and over, at different times and different tempos and different keys but all, ultimately, the same; so rarely is anything new on.)

When he locks onto Shaw’s mind, immobilizing him, it’s more than just gripping his motor cortex tight. It’s Charles, in his body. In every muscle, holding them still. In every nerve, overriding their signals.

He doesn’t tell Erik that when he does this, he’ll feel everything Shaw feels.

* * *

When Charles was young, he learned hard lessons about eavesdropping. He’s . . . very careful about how he looks, and where – though Erik doesn’t quite understand that, not as much as he thinks he does. There are things Charles would prefer to remain unseen, even though he knows the intangible shape of them, hovering in the distance.

Erik thinks that Charles thinks he knows everything, because he can glimpse past words straight into the thoughts behind them. Erik thinks, occasionally, that Charles is blind, and arrogant.

Maybe, in some ways, he’s right.

Thoughts are rarely clearly defined; even more rarely do people think in words. Mostly his power is an interpretation of scattered images, stream-of-consciousness intent, and the primal language the brain uses to move the body and interpret its signals.

Erik, though. Erik plans.

And if Erik doesn’t know what Charles will endure to see his revenge through, then he cannot deliberately choose revenge over the agony Charles will suffer; he cannot forget the pain Charles will undergo, along with Shaw, in the heat of his triumph.

So Charles doesn’t tell him.

He is infinitely glad for this when the bullet slams into him, _blood_ and _pain_ and the _crack_ of bone that doesn’t come until after Erik twists Charles into his lap, a crumpled lead lump falling to blood-wet sand.

Charles is bleeding, and Charles cannot feel his legs – _no, don’t tell him, don’t ever let him know_ – and Erik leaves him there.

Confirmation, if any was needed, of what his choice would have been if he’d known what killing Shaw would do to Charles.

Charles’s pain has never been as important to Erik as his crusade.

* * *

After is hard.

* * *

He wants to hide, so badly. Despite the impossibility, he never wants Erik to know what happened to him because of the beach and that bullet.

Sean, surprisingly, picks up on it first.

Hank is the one who really understands; Alex is simply furious that Charles is trying to protect Erik from the repercussions of his own decisions.

He isn’t.

But he can’t let Erik know, ever, how much power he has to hurt Charles.

There was only one soft kiss, over a chessboard, but Charles had _wanted_ in a way that had then surprised him; in retrospect, not so much. What wasn’t there to want? Erik’s mind was unbelievable – vast corridors with streaming thought, impeccably organized and yet a labyrinth begging to be explored.

Being closed off from it was not dissimilar from having a door slammed in his face.

He thinks he could love Erik.

But Erik cannot love him, and Charles knows himself well enough that while he could smile, and share friendship, with all sorts of people – he could never do more than feel a fruitless longing for a man who does not put his loved one’s pain above his own vendetta.

He’s selfish, that way.

And it’s more proof, really, that Erik never felt this thing Charles thinks now he must have imagined; this tiny burning ember that flared whenever Erik was near, burning brighter with every chess game, every shared conversation. He would like to think that he has more self-respect than to intrude where he’s not wanted, even if he arrived offering his heart.

* * *

Of course, Charles never does get what he wants.

(It would help, sometimes, if he thought he knew what he wanted, if it didn’t change day by day, wavering like leaves in the wind.)

It is several months, even though he does not hide – oh, how he wants to hide – and that time just reinforces what he has refused to think about. Erik is never far from Charles’s mind, but as the days stretch to weeks stretch to months, and there is no word, the tiny ember flickers dark, curling into something hard and bitter.

 _I’m sorry_ , comes the letter when it does arrive; two words after six months – Erik sending word as soon as he found out, if Charles knows him at all. That it took him this long to find out, with Charles as out and about as he possibly can be, shows Charles how much – how little – he is on Erik’s mind.

Willful blindness is a telepath’s only refuge; and it seems that Erik will not even let him have that.

* * *

They spent the better part of twelve hours on that beach, eluding the various exploratory parties sent to check the scene and report back to the ships. Charles could fight through pain, but after dying with Shaw, and the bullet, and Erik, and _his legs_ – he needed time he didn’t have to grasp his focus again, and that became harder as blood seeped from him.

There really never was any hope, no matter what the doctors said. Not after that terrible _crack_ and the breathless numbness that followed.

* * *

Charles wishes he had to fight to keep the numbness from his heart, but the hurt there burns so high that apathy was never a possible refuge at all. 

It's still burning.

**Author's Note:**

> I read quite a few stories dogging Charles, his telepathy, and his arrogance, and it really made me think. On the one hand, Raven's desire for privacy is only natural; everyone has security in knowing they are alone in their own head. On the other hand, people are not so very different from one another when you get all the way down to fundamentals; so what is there to bother hiding from someone who's probably so used to thoughts like yours that they won't even really hear them (kind of like the voice of Charlie Brown's teacher)? 
> 
> Also, I saw First Class and tutted in disapproval when Erik flipped Charles over after he was shot. First thing is never move anyone with a suspected spinal injury (unless something else is likely to kill them, I suppose). And I known canon/fanon is that the bullet shattered Charles's vertebra on impact, damaging the spinal column and causing his paralysis. But I wondered, what if it wasn't the bullet entirely but Erik moving Charles after that did the real damage?
> 
> So this, this sad and piecemeal and somewhat broken little thing was born. I'm setting it free so that I can move on.


End file.
